


007: The Bedside Companion

by shetlandowl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - James Bond Fusion, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Coffee Shops, Cutting, I'm intentionally not tagging it as infidelity, Identity Porn, M/M, See more in notes at end, Steve/Bond has sex with other people, Torture, more tags to come, past James Bond/Q
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-22 10:55:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16596545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shetlandowl/pseuds/shetlandowl
Summary: Steve and Tony meet at a little coffee shop in Vauxhall, London, while James Bond is grasping for leads for an explosive target known only as Scorpius.Call this a coffee shop AU meets professors, meets spies, meets identity porn, meetsSam and Bucky are living their best fucking lives.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: As James Bond, Steve has sex with other people, and as he _should_ , his ear piece is there for Q-branch to provide back-up/support as needed. 
> 
> For note on why I'm not tagging it as infidelity, see the concluding notes (for spoiler reasons), but I wanted to put this up first, and to apologize. **I made an assumption about the pervasive qualities of James Bond, and that led readers to read things they did not want to see. That is my mistake and my lack of appropriate warning/tagging, and I'm very sorry about that.**

Steve opened the door without knocking and entered Sharon’s office with his usual strut. He did not limp, he did not favor his right side, and his sunny smile did not falter.

Sharon recognized him with a soft gasp of surprise. She tried not to smile back. “James! Where on earth have you been? I’ve been searching London for you,” she said with an air of indignation. Before Steve could reply, she switched on the intercom speaker. “007 is here, sir.”

As she reported his presence to H, Steve slid up to her desk and eased himself close enough that his thigh brushed against her forearm. The silken mohair fabric of his suit whispered over her bare skin, and Steve watched her smile and shiver involuntarily.

“Why are you so late, James?” she whispered, leaning into his offered touch. “You left me here, pining away without so much as a postcard to keep me warm.”

“I’m afraid I was held up and fell out of an airplane without a parachute,” Steve murmured softly, “Sharon, you know I’ll never stray. And how beautiful you are today, a feast for my eyes.”

Sharon rolled her eyes and gave him a long-suffering smile. “And what about the rest of you?”

Steve opened his mouth to answer when the intercom buzzed to life.

“Send 007 in, Carter,” H demanded tersely. “We don’t have time for your usual repartee this morning.”

Steve sighed, then with a wink and a smile he slid off her desk to let himself into H’s adjoining office. His meeting was brief, more so than usual. Steve’s last mission had only been a partial success; Venice was no more submerged than it was the week prior, but Scorpius had gotten away. What little Steve had salvaged only baffled Q branch; the data was there, but it was either too damaged to view, or the security installed in the drive was beyond the best at MI-6. Either way, Steve was firmly back to square one.

H sent him packing with a single mission directive: bring Scorpius down, by any means necessary.

***

Caffe Italia was an unassuming little spot not five minutes from Vauxhall. Five minutes was enough distance to discourage most SIS employees from overwhelming the space at every hour, but close enough that those in need of a break could entertain a short stroll for a decent cup of coffee and some homemade shortbread.

Steve made his way there through the pouring rain only to realize he had never seen Caffe Italia during a lunch rush before. The space was overrun, every table (even the ones squeezed into awkward corners) occupied. Even after all the time it took for Steve to wait in line for his coffee and his biscuits, there was still a body in every seat around the little cafe. Apparently, nobody felt the need to face the awful downpour so that Steve could have a seat and take a moment for himself to recover.

He took another look around the room, and found himself corrected. There wasn’t a body in every chair.

Steve made his way to one of the prize tables against the wall near an outlet. A young man sat at the table alone, tapping away on a laptop while speaking on his phone. The man’s computer bag occupied the only other chair.

“Pardon me?” Steve said, gently touching the man’s shoulder for his attention. The man jumped in his surprise and spun around to see what Steve wanted.

Steve held up his small bundle of shortbread biscuits then gestured for the unoccupied chair. “There are no other seats. Cookies for a chair?”

The young man blinked up at him with wide, honey-brown eyes. Then, all at once, the man jumped into action and reached to pull his bag off the chair, gesturing for Steve to sit down.

“No, oye mami, voy a colgar,” he whispered into his phone in a rush, hurrying to get off the phone while Steve got comfortable in his seat. “Este chico es guapisimo. Sí—ciao, mami.”

“Thanks,” Steve said with a smile that usually got him what he wanted. He unwrapped the biscuits and placed the bundle between them. “Please, help yourself. The package is bigger than average, it’s made to be shared.”

The young man paused and stared. Steve arched his brow and gave him a meaningful look as he tried a sip of his coffee.

The man was fighting off a blush, but eventually he managed to speak. “You’re the first American I’ve met in London,” he said, breaking off a small piece of a biscuit. “Do you work around here?”

“Yeah, right across the road,” Steve said with a more relaxed smile. He sounded like New York, but the pricey parts. “You?”

“Maybe,” the man said with a nervous laugh. “Interview. Just came from another one in Cambridge; I’m trying to stay in research for now, but I also want to stay in London. Sorry, nervous,” he said with a rueful look, “I got here yesterday, I think I’ve had eighteen cups of coffee in twelve hours and I’m not exactly sure what’s going on anymore. I’m Tony.”

Tony offered Steve his hand, and Steve couldn’t help but shake it. “I’m Steve, Steve Rogers. What is it you do, Tony?”

“I’m an engineer. I fix things,” Tony said with a hint of a smile, but if he had more to say, he silenced himself with a sip of coffee.

Steve watched him with an impish smirk. “What kinds of things do you fix?”

“Anything,” Tony said simply, though he said it without a smirk of amusement Steve would have expected. As if _anything_ was a perfectly reasonable description of a mortal man’s aptitude. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” Steve said after a moment, then, figuring he had little to lose, and Tony didn’t exactly strike him as KGB or the likes thereof. He shifted in his seat and pulled out a singed USB. “Think you could get into this?”

“What the hell, did you drop it in a campfire?” Tony muttered mostly to himself, put he peered at it for a minute before going for his computer. Steve fiddled with his phone for a while, distracting himself from the way Tony’s button-up stretched across his strong shoulders and his lean back. If he didn’t know any better, he would have guessed a blacksmith before something as sedentary as engineering. He’d bet himself five quid that ass was to die for.

Tony’s laptop was sleek and unlike anything Steve had ever seen. The first hint of a red flag was waving somewhere in his gut. “Nice computer,” he noted casually. “Where’d you get it?”

“I made it,” Tony said simply, plugging Steve’s USB in and waiting for it to connect. “Graduation project, actually. Hey! Looks like you lucked out, Steve. It’s not dead,” he added with a big smile. “Got the key on you?” 

“That’s part of the problem, I might have lost it,” Steve admitted sheepishly. “Just got back from a business trip and a few things are missing.”

“Don’t worry about it, shouldn’t be a problem,” Tony assured him with a smile before getting to work. “Might take a minute.”

“Wow, really?” Steve said in open amazement. “But, will you be late for your interview?”

“Got an hour, this won’t take that long.”

It had taken Q-branch two hours to realize they couldn’t do it. Steve didn’t have much hope, but maybe they’d get something here. All he needed was a lead.

“You get this to work, Tony, I’ll be the best professional reference of your life.”

Tony laughed, a quiet, tittering laugh that bordered on giggling that tickled a genuine smile out of Steve.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Tony warned him, laughter still warm in his voice. “I don’t like liars.”

“No lie,” Steve promised, holding up his hands in further expression of innocence. “I’ll call Cambridge myself and get you the job. Hell, I’ll call Imperial College London, they’ve got a great engineering program—”

Tony looked up from his work to stare at Steve. “How do you know that?”

Steve blinked back at him in surprise, then gave a little helpless shrug. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Don’t joke about that, Steve. They are the best, I couldn’t even get an interview with them,” Tony said under his breath, turning back to the task at hand.

“Why’s that? You can fix anything,” Steve pointed out. Tony’s downturned lips quirked up in a little smile.

“Just because I can do the job doesn’t mean they’ll overlook my experience,” Tony absently explained, though he sounded fairly distracted by what he was doing. It was only a black screen full of code that meant nothing to Steve, but Tony was typing away with a confidence and speed Steve rarely witnessed.

“No teaching experience, only a year out of grad school…” Tony continued, half-aware of his own words. His focus was mesmerizing, and Steve almost felt the need to evacuate the whole cafe just so he could study Tony’s handsome profile and the allure of his slightly parted lips in private.

Then, all at once, Tony straightened in his excitement and his face split with a victorious grin. “Got it! You’re in, here,” he said and turned the computer to Steve.

Of all the shit Steve had seen, it hadn’t prepared him for walking into random miracle workers. But sure enough, the drive was open, and there were five files available in the folder for him to look through. It only took him a minute to skim through them to notice a pattern. _Delft._

“Tony… I owe you big time,” Steve murmured as he finished up his scan and ejected the thumb drive. “I meant what I said. Give your business card.”

Tony rolled his eyes with a good-natured smile, but he got his business card out anyway. “Don’t sweat it, Steve, Steve Rogers,” he teased, scribbling something on the back of his business card before handing it over. “My number’s on the back. Not sure how long I’ll be here in London, but, call me.”

“I will,” Steve promised, pocketing the thumb drive and taking Tony’s card in hand. Tony Stark. “I really mean it, Tony. You’ve been a great help.”

Tony squirmed in his seat, momentarily uncomfortable by the praise before he got himself together and quietly replied, “You’re welcome, Steve.”

Steve smiled back at him, but left it at that. He had work to do. His phone was already ringing in his hand as he made his way out of Caffe Italia and turned in the direction of the nearest tube station.

“What do you want, double-oh-pain in my ass?” Bucky muttered down the line, his voice intermittently indistinct against a backdrop of explosions and Sam’s shouts of triumph. “You’re taking me away from the ka-booms and the ka-pows, man, this better be good.”

“Buck, I need you to do me a favor,” Steve told him without addressing the typical griping. “Call up Imperial College London, give them this name. _Tony Stark._ I will send you his details. Get him a job there, any job he wants.”

Steve could practically feel Bucky peering back at him over his safety glasses with a pained expression. “…now why the hell would I do something like that?”

“Because he just gave me the lead on Scorpius that Q-branch couldn’t,” Steve replied impatiently. “Make the call. He’s an asset, Buck. I need him in London.”

“Consider it done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation for Tony's Spanish line: “No, hey mom, I'm hanging up. This guy's really hot. Yeah—bye, mom."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Mention of childhood trauma.

Holland was far enough south that the brisk spring night felt mild compared to London. Steve wandered along one of the many canals in the city, listening to the ringing in his headphones while he kept an eye on the camera feed on his phone.

The call connected around the time Steve had started to prepare for the voicemail.

“Hello?”

“Hi Tony,” he said with a smile of surprise. “This is Steve Rogers, we met the other day. You helped me with some computer files.”

“Steve, Steve Rogers, how could I forget?” Tony laughed, his voice honeyed and deep. It sounded grounded and gentle, and so very different from the caffeine fueled anxiety Steve had met earlier in the week. “You were my lucky star, Steve. What the hell did you do?”

“What, did I have to spell it out for you?” Steve replied with a broad grin. Maybe he should have been worried about his lack of transparency, but what was the point in lying to himself? He was downright pleased that the coincidences hadn’t gone over Tony’s head. “I told you I would be the best professional reference of your life.”

On his phone, Steve watched the feed from his most recent addition to the Delft tourism industry - a planted camera in a decorative little ceramic Dutch slipper done up in Delft blue. For the second night in a row, there seemed to be no unusual nighttime movements in the overpriced tourist shop.

All Steve had to do was wait, but patience had never been his strongest suit.

“I see,” Tony murmured, a playful lilt in his voice. “You had the time to call them, but you couldn’t find the time to call me.”

“I’m calling you now, doesn’t that count for something?” he asked casually. “Can I assume you’re still in London?”

“I have you to thank for that, don’t I? Imperial College London offered me a research fellowship, two year contract. Who are you?”

“I’m your lucky star,” Steve teased, then with a quiet laugh he quickly added, “just a government grunt with friends in low places. I would have been screwed without your help, so I pulled some strings. Was it too much?”

A flicker of movement on his camera feed gave Steve pause. He couldn’t be sure yet if it was a shadow or the movement he’d been waiting for, but either way, he turned in the direction of the old town square.

“I love this job and I can afford to rent an apartment - a flat - in South Kensington,” Tony drawled. “It’s a studio, but it’s mine. Unless you voted for Trump, I don’t care if you work for the Devil himself.”

Those weren’t shadows on his phone; it was the movement Steve had been waiting for. Ceramic souvenir clocks were being taken off the shelf in a hurry under cover of darkness. Steve picked up his pace.

“Speak of the Devil, he seems to be calling,” Steve murmured as he turned the final corner that brought him to the driveway of the little shop. A gray van was parked out back while four men worked to load it with stolen Delftware.

LJ58 HDJ. London plates.

“Let me take you for a coffee, Tony,” he said, keeping his voice soft, a gesture of intimacy and a measure of precaution so his voice wouldn’t carry on the wind. “Celebrate the new job. This weekend?”

“Presumptuous, Steve… what makes you think I’m interested?”

Steve smirked at the question. “Es solo una suposición.”

Tony audibly floundered on the other end of the line, and oh how Steve kicked himself for dropping that particular line when he wasn’t there to see Tony’s face in person. If only he had had the time to cherish it.

“Coffee? Saturday? Eleven o’clock, Maitre Choux on Harrington Road. I’ll wear something fitted. Sexy but tasteful, because I’m not trying too hard.”

Tony’s embarrassed laughter escaped in a soft squeak of amusement. “Anything you haven’t figured out yet, Steve?”

“Whether you’ll be joining me or not,” Steve whispered, impish in his confidence.

“Depends,” Tony replied, humming to himself softly. “My treat?”

“I think my fragile ego can take it. Don’t expect me to put out on the first date just because you’re paying, though,” Steve added primly. The thieves took off across the street, and Steve slipped around the corner, smoothly pocketing his phone to fire off a tracker after the van using the multi-purpose epipen Q-branch had armed him with.

“I have to go, Tony. Saturday, eleven o’clock?”

Tony’s laugh still carried in his voice as he finally conceded. “Saturday, eleven o’clock. It’s a date.”

***

Steve had intercepted the master criminals at the first pub on English soil. While they drank like fish and congratulated themselves on a job well done, Steve broke into the van to see what had been so special about the dozen ceramic clocks they had gone all the way to Delft to steal.

What looked like beautiful, glazed porcelain on the outside felt like putty to the touch and smelled distinctly of motor oil.

That was certainly one way to bring large quantities of explosives into the country.

Driving off with the van would only show his hand and Steve would be no closer to capturing Scorpius. Instead, he reached into the soft innards of each ‘clock’ and tagged each of the with a tracker.

He slipped out of the van unnoticed, locked it back up, and headed into the pub for a drink of his own. Steve wasn’t letting the ratty crew out of his sight until he was sure they were headed to London, and besides, they were treating everyone to a free pint. An ironic perk of the job.

***

Tony was nowhere in sight when Steve arrived at the little patisserie that Saturday morning. He let out his breath and relaxed his posture, shifting his weight to take pressure off his healing bruises in whatever time he had before Tony arrived.

He took a moment to confirm that the van hadn’t moved since it parked the night before, and that the clocks were all still in the van. The way those dimwits had drank when they’d finally gotten into town, Steve wouldn’t be surprised if they were nursing hangovers through Sunday.

“Steve, are you okay?”

Steve spun around in surprise to see Tony stepping out of the patisserie, a look of concern clear in his expression. He seemed to have sized up Steve’s hurt side in an instant, his hand held awkwardly in the space between after an aborted attempt to better see what had happened. Steve smiled when he wanted to wince, and stood up straight when his body only wanted to rest. Gently, he took Tony’s hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing the soft skin of Tony’s hand and his calloused knuckles before simply holding his hand.

“Couldn’t feel better,” Steve lied with a grateful smile, not that he could help himself from playing along. “Unless you’re searching for a willing patient, in which case…”

Tony rolled his eyes and gave him a dry look in return, looking as unimpressed as a man holding back a smirk could possibly look. “I’m not feeling very willing to do anything right now, Steve. What is this place you picked? Ten bucks per eclair?”

“You were the one who volunteered to pay,” Steve reminded him, and Tony squeezed his hand in return. “Will you allow me?”

“I’m not letting anybody pay ten bucks for a skinny eclair. On principle, Steve,” Tony insisted, and Steve shouldn’t laugh so easily. “There’s a farmer’s market a few blocks down. Unless that’s too cheap for your sexy without trying too hard look?”

Steve arched a brow and pursed his lips. “Tell me, has that mouth of yours ever gotten you into trouble, Tony?”

“Only with people who want to kiss me or punch me,” Tony purred, practically bragging. “And you don’t seem that violent to me.”

“How could I disagree with that?” Steve muttered, then swept his thumb over the back of Tony’s hand gently. “Go on, then. Where’s that farmer’s market?”

Tony slipped his hand further into Steve’s, and as Steve had asked, he led the way down Harrington. As promised, it was only a block away from Maitre Choux. Tony told him about the projects he had been folded into at work, and the handful of graduate students he was supporting through their dissertations. One of them was even working on solar powered continuous glucose monitor that Tony was really excited about, though they still had work to do on the software.

They strolled side by side through the pleasant morning crowd, stopping here for a spinach and feta croissant, there for a lime and pistachio cake. One industrious soul had set up shop for fresh, hot coffee, and Tony drank his first cup so quickly Steve handed his own over to him and ordered himself another.

“You’re really good at hiding it, I’ll give you that,” Tony said after one conversation trailed off and they were enjoying some silent people watching together. “We can go sit down if that’ll help. Or get you a cab.”

“I’m fine, Tony. There’s nothing going on,” Steve promised, turning them towards a flower stall in the hopes of distracting him. He had no business being attracted to observant people, he really didn’t.

“My opinion about liars hasn’t changed, you know.”

Steve paid for a small bouquet of blush pink peonies, and handed it to Tony. “For you, to remember today,” Steve told him, but Tony didn’t seem all that charmed.

“Keep them,” Tony told him coolly. “I had a good time, Steve, but I think I’ve had enough for–”

“Because you think I’m lying about being hurt?”

“I know you’re lying about being hurt,” Tony said with a sigh, sounding more tired than upset. “Look, I know what it’s like. Bruises, whatever. You can’t even be honest about an injury, that’s cool, it’s just not something I’m interested in, alright?”

Steve watched Tony turn to leave. He wasn’t entirely sure he heard right, or even understood why a white lie upset Tony the way it did, but he shook it from his thoughts and jogged after him.

“Tony! Tony, wait,” Steve called after him, and fortunately, Tony turned around. “I just, I didn’t want to make it a big deal. I sparred with someone stronger than me and they bruised my side. It’s a first date, it was supposed to be about you. I didn’t want to make it about me. It won’t happen again.”

“Yeah, pretty sure it was supposed to be about the both of us,” Tony drawled. “Bye, Steve.”

Steve hadn’t been turned down in years, in decades. More specifically, he hadn’t been turned down since he was a skinny little runt who felt too faint to speak around attractive people. Back then, he had only had enough circulation for one function at a time.

Being turned down now was sobering in a way Steve hadn’t imagined.

“You’re right,” Steve said, before Tony was out of arm’s reach. Tony turned back to watch him squirm. “I’m usually the one who has to have it together, but that’s… either way, I’m sorry. I wish I’d gotten you white flowers now, but please. They are a gift.”

He offered the pink peonies to Tony again, but this time he did so at a distance. Tony looked at the peonies for a beat before looking up at Steve.

“What’s the difference?”

“White peonies symbolize regret,” Steve explained with uncharacteristic calm. “Pink peonies are for romance, but also for prosperity. For your new job and your new place.”

Tony eyed him and his flowers. Then, with a cautious, bashful smile, he accepted the bouquet.

“Why don’t you come see it for yourself?”

***

They made it to Tony’s studio. Steve had stood there in the little space that served as Tony’s living room, bedroom, and dining room while Tony filled a pint glass with water for the fresh cut flowers.

There was a loveseat and a small, round table with three chairs. In true, student apartment fashion, none of it matched.

“Where do you sleep?” Steve asked, more than mildly concerned.

Tony walked to the closet, opened the doors, and pulled down a Murphy wall-bed.

Steve stared, horrified. “No,” he said before he could think of a more diplomatic way to express himself.

“I think it’s cool, look at all the space it saves,” Tony pointed out, and his sincerity almost brought Steve to tears.

“ _Hell_ no. You can nurse me back to health at my place, come on.”

***

They took a Lyft to Steve’s Chelsea flat on the the embankment. Steve left Tony in the sitting room to stare at the six front-facing windows overlooking the Embankment Gardens and the River Thames beyond while he tried to scrounge up something worth eating, or whatever normal people did for house guests.

After several minutes of digging around, all Steve found worth eating in his kitchen was champagne and ice. As tempting as that was, he wasn’t so sure it was appropriate.

“What was it you said you did for a living?”

Steve shut the empty freezer to face Tony. In his kitchen. He hadn’t heard Tony walk in.

“I work for the government,” Steve said, casting around for answers that Tony might swallow. “It’s classified, but mostly my job is… dealing with international negotiations that other people don’t want to deal with. It’s tedious, but I get great miles.”

“…fair enough,” Tony said after a brief silence. “Can I help?”

Steve made a face and finally stepped aside to show him the empty fridge. “This is the first time I’ve been home in two months. The only thing that hasn’t expired is my ice and my champagne.”

Tony grinned to himself and shook his head slowly. “Then why don’t we grab the ice, and you show me to your bedroom?”

The bedroom had a nice view of the Royal Hospital Garden, but once Steve’s shirt had come off, Tony didn’t seem to care about anything other than Steve. His eyes briefly lingered on the body Steve had honed over the years before stalling on the large bruises that covered Steve’s right side from hip to shoulder.

Without much fanfare, Tony pulled his shirt and his jeans off and climbed into bed with Steve. He had wrapped some of that ice from Steve’s freezer in a hand towel, and that was the extent of the romance they shared their first night together in bed: Tony pressed against Steve’s left side, pressing the cold compress against his bruised body, while they talked quietly together about anything and everything.

It wasn’t until Tony had fallen asleep and sun had long set that Steve noticed his clocks were on the move. The van was where he had last seen it, but all twelve clocks were scattering across the city at an alarming pace.

He pressed a kiss to Tony’s forehead and leapt out of bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation for Steve's Spanish line: “Just a guess.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Canon-typical violence.

“Where the hell is Q?” Steve snapped at the nearest menial grunt trying to placate him. “He can’t avoid me forever. You,” he said, viciously pointing a finger at the nearest poor soul trying to address the problem nobody seemed to grasp. “Get me Q. There are eight live bombs in the fucking city.”

“Let us look at it for two minutes,” one of them dared to tell him, as if they hadn’t already spent twenty minutes poking at the four devices Steve had brought in for testing. “This is a simple problem—”

“Then _fix it!_ ” Steve growled and stalked away to pace in agitation like a caged predator. Violence would solve nothing now, but oh, how he wished it would. And still his body ached; he had been up for too long, given himself too little time to recover, and he couldn’t remember the last square meal he’d had.

After leaving his warm bed and Tony’s attentive care, Steve had managed to disarm four of the twelve clocks. It had taken hours, and while the others were still on the move, Steve returned what he could to Q in the hopes of using it to locate Scorpius. Even he knew that he had no chance of stopping twelve bombs from going off at the same time, but maybe the electric detonators could help him find the man behind the threat before anything happened.

Soon, it would be 9 o’clock in the morning, and maybe Steve would be too late. Morning rush hour offered the best opportunity for maximum damage, but it did not seem to worry anybody at Q-branch as much as it worried Steve. As always, Q left him in the care of his technicians and engineers. Usually, they were serviceable enough, but on a time crunch like this, Steve felt his cool slipping.

“Why, if it isn’t James Bond.”

Steve straightened and spun to face Natasha with well practiced charm. He found her standing close enough that the scent of her perfume filled his senses, a spicy, intoxicating spell he could find himself falling under given half a chance. 

“006. I must be dreaming.”

“Do you dream of me, James?” she purred, eyeing him with wanton interest. “Or am I just another woman destined to repent in your arms?”

But Steve had no time to play coy. He had no time to waste.

“Another night to savor the dream, Natasha,” he murmured, a softly growled whisper that warmed her cheek before he sealed it with a tender brush of his lips over the corner of her smile.

“Only tell me when, James,” she promised. “I will bring the caviar and the champagne.”

He watched her saunter away, a fantasy coiled in the masterful sway of her hips. Unlike him, Romanov was allowed into Q’s control room without delay. 006 always got what she wanted.

One quick look at the grunts he’d been saddled with told him the Lead Dumbo Engineer and Head of Wasting Steve’s Patience were nowhere near a solution.

He needed to call Tony before it was too late.

Except, when he tried, Tony wouldn’t answer his first or his second call. After the third attempt, Steve used an added feature on his phone to forced the call through onto speakerphone.

“Tony? Tony, I need your help, please pick up.”

There was a shuffle of indistinguishable noises in the distance before he heard Tony’s incredulous voice. “Who the—”

“Answer the phone, please,” Steve said, doing his best to sound reasonably patient. The muffed noise grew a little louder, and Steve could imagine Tony digging through his bag for the phone. He didn’t give Tony a chance to interrupt. “There were two packages left at our office and now there’s a crazy person on the phone threatening the building with something he’s calling long-range electric detonators, do you know about them?”

“You have some fucking nerve—”

“Tony, I wouldn’t have run out last night if I had a choice, but I get it: after this I’ll be out of your life forever if that’s what you want. Just two minutes Tony, please. I’m scared,” Steve whispered with greater sincerity than he’d expected of himself. “How serious is a threat like that?”

“Uh,” Tony stalled for a moment before excusing himself from something Steve couldn’t hear. Tony’s attention was back to Steve in the next moment. “It could be really bad, Steve. Do you have the packages?”

“Sort of—I have the devices attached to them,” he started to explain when Tony’s breath caught. “What?”

“It’s a fucking miracle the bombs didn’t go off when they were removed,” Tony whispered. “Are you sure they’re bombs? They could be fake.”

“Erring on the side of caution here, Tony. Take a look,” Steve grabbed two of the detonators from under the scientists noses to share with Tony through his camera phone. He held the phone angled toward the detonators by his teeth, and put his earbuds on so he could hear Tony’s voice clearly while he worked.

“…okay, can’t be sure by phone, but it looks legit,” Tony muttered mostly to himself, and there was a quick clicking sound. “You’re on speaker with my students. Could you open one of them up?”

Between Tony’s directions and the Q-branch scientists’ help fetching tools, the impromptu virtual dissection quickly became the only viable lead on Scorpius. In the end, Tony confessed he’d never seen a design like it, but his best guess was that the bombs were real and triggered using specific radio waves. Scorpius would only have to send the signal on a predetermined frequency to activate the bombs. If both (all twelve) bombs were queued up to the same frequency, they could be activated at the same time, but there was no way to know unless they looked at the detonators individually.

“Tell me the bomb squad is on the way, Steve,” Tony pleaded, “this—that’s not an amateur’s work, that’s a serious piece of equipment, you shouldn’t be handling it.”

“Thank you for your help, Tony,” Steve whispered as he scribbled out a list for the scientists of things he needed. He snarled at them until they all but ran away to get surveillance equipment and radio jammers ready in a new car for him. “The professionals are on their way, but I feel better. I’m sorry for, for what I did this morning. You deserve better. Good luck with—”

“Just call me when—call me when you can?” Tony’s voice sounded much closer, and Steve could only assume he’d been taken off of speakerphone. “The minute it’s done, Steve.”

Steve smiled to himself quietly. He didn’t deserve it, but he would take it. “I promise, Tony. I’ll call you as soon as we’re clear.”

*** 

The mission was a failure in so many ways.

Of the eight clocks left, Steve reached five. Radio jammers from World War II were operational all around the city, and they bought him precious time, but it was still - in so many ways - a race against the clock. Steve had anticipated Scorpius would notice his interference, but how Scorpius understood that Steve had discovered the triggering mechanism in time to find a way around the jammers was beyond him.

A train was knocked off course in an explosion near Kensington Palace that left sixteen wounded and two dead. A ferry destined for Tower Bridge safely passed its most likely target and made little noise at the bottom of the Thames after the informed captain evacuated all passengers in a dinghy and sunk the boat.

Steve had been on course for the bomb planted on the Millenium Bridge. He reached the bridge only in time to fire warning shots into the sky, shouting for people to run for solid ground when around him the world ceased to exist. A white light consumed him and all the sounds and sensations of life.

His only memory of the blast was the weightlessness of flight, and in the next heartbeat, his pain was no more.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony had seen the explosions on TV. It was all anybody would talk about - nineteen fatalities, thirty-four injured, and no explanation. Some newscasters remarked how unusual it was for such an act of terror to go unclaimed, and others celebrated the great community response supporting the families of the victims in their hour of need.

But for Tony, the hours passed in numbing silence.

Steve was practically a stranger, a man he had only met twice. He could count on his fingers the number of hours he had spent with the man. He was intelligent and he was thoughtful, and in any topic of conversation they had ventured to - poetry, politics, philosophy - Steve had proved to be a man in his element. Tony had enjoyed his company, found comfort in Steve’s humble confidence.

Steve had felt larger than life somehow, an unbridled spirit unlike anything Tony had experienced. Sure, he was a far cry from Mr. Right, but Tony would have loved to have known Steve better as a friend. He refused to accept that Steve’s was one of the nineteen lives claimed in the attack.

Hours passed, and Steve never called. All day, Tony watched his phone like a hawk. He finished his workshop, he attended his meetings, he plodded through the emails that needed answering, but all the while, his phone never left his sight, and it never rang.

Nobody asked any questions when Tony finally excused himself from the lab early. It had been five hours since the attack, and after all this silence, Tony’s only remaining hope was that Steve was one of the many injured. He could not focus, not on his work or on the people around him; even opening his office took a few tries before he managed to wrench the key in the right direction. If he was going to be miserable, he might as well be miserable at home.

He blindly walked around his office to grab his computer bag when the door gently closed behind him.

“Tony, thank god it’s you.”

Tony recognized Steve’s voice before he recognized the hooded man in his office.

“What— _Steve?_ ” Tony hissed in disbelief. All at once, he tossed his office keys and his computer bag on his desk and rushed over to hug him, delirious with relief, but Steve got a hand between them just in time. 

“I—the blast, it got me,” Steve whispered hoarsely. Every word sounded heavy, every breath labored with pain. Tony instinctively took a step back even as he leaned closer, trying to peek under the dark hoodie Steve had pulled over his head.

“Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?” Tony whispered, “do—do you need me to take you there?”

“Checked out,” Steve grunted softly. He paused between every second or third word, wheezing softly under his breath in a most stubborn attempt to contain the agony. “I’m alone.”

Tony set his jaw and grabbed his keys. “No, Steve. You’re not alone. Come on, you’re coming home with me.”

*** 

They took a cab back to Tony’s place. Steve kept his hoodie in place, so Tony didn’t know what state he was in until they got to his place and Steve got into Tony’s bed without a single complaint.

“Let me, uh. Let’s get you out of that, yeah?” Tony murmured, trying not to freak out. Steve had to be in a bad way to willingly crawl into the wall-bed that nearly made him cry the day before.

Steve could barely raise his arms to help as Tony peeled the zip-up hoodie off each arm, and by some miracle, Tony managed it without scissors and without hurting Steve.

“Could,” Steve mumbled, struggling to form words. He wouldn’t look Tony in the eyes, but not that it mattered. Tony couldn’t stop staring. Steve was partially covered in bandages around his left shoulder and his torso, and what skin was visible looked bruised and burned all over. A constellation of scab wounds marred his chest. Tony could only comfort himself by consciously reminding himself of how superficial they seemed.

“Could you,” Steve tried again, his words slurring together. “Lights.”

Tony blinked at him. He hadn’t turned the lights on when they came in, and it took a moment too long for him to realize Steve meant the light coming in through the windows. He rushed across the room to pull down the blinds for the two windows of his studio, then pulled the curtains shut for good measure.

He came back to bed in time to help Steve ease onto his back to rest.

“Are, uh. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” Tony asked, trying not to sound as uncomfortable by the whole situation as he felt. Steve had trusted him. If anyone knew what it felt like to be alone in a foreign country, it was Tony. But that didn’t mean he knew how to help.

“Don’t you need medicine? Nurses?” Tony asked while helping Steve out of his loafers. “Steve, it was a _bomb_. Nineteen people are dead, this shit is serious.”

“Got medicine,” Steve whispered, nuzzling into a pillow. It wasn’t the silken designer sheets he had in his own bed, but it was well-loved jersey cotton. Tony wasn’t exactly sure when he’d last washed them, but at least they were soft.

When Steve didn’t offer any more information, Tony felt around in the pockets of the hoodie to see if he’d missed something. They turned out to be empty, but after a quick pat-down, Tony found the three pill bottles in Steve’s sweats.

One look at Steve, and Tony knew he had passed out. He looked at the bottles more carefully, set his alarm to remind him when Steve’s next round probably was, and tucked Steve into bed. Tony didn’t know why Steve was determined to stay away from the hospital, but at least he was resting peacefully now. Maybe that was better for him than stressing out in a hospital.

Despite the comfort of knowing Steve was alive, Tony couldn’t bring himself to work. Instead, he busied himself in the kitchen. He wasn’t sure what Steve would be able to eat and keep down - he didn’t even know what dietary allergies Steve might have - but he figured plain oatmeal would be safe. As quietly as he could, he got a pot on the stove, and tried to remember how his mom had once taught him to make oatmeal the right way.

***

Weeks passed, and little by little, Steve started to get better. The first time Tony had helped change Steve’s bandages, he’d almost been sick. How a man could survive with such awful wounds - let alone stand - astounded him. He could only imagine how uncomfortable Steve must be in hospitals to check out so quickly.

Steve was a model patient. He didn’t fuss, he did everything Tony asked him to, and even after the first week, Tony could comfort himself with Steve’s clear signs of improvement. Every day that passed, Tony left for work knowing Steve breathed more easily, and would come home in the afternoons to bigger, more brilliant smiles.

Steve’s constant presence hadn’t always been easy to deal with; Tony’s studio was already small, and Steve’s limited ability to move or do things for himself made things worse. But even when he was miserable and bored, Steve had managed to ask for space and silence, and he didn’t take it personally when Tony left the studio for hours for some much-needed privacy. Sometimes all Tony needed to find an even keel again was to go down to the local pub, enjoy a pint or two while pretending to follow the game.

Two months passed in relative peace and comfort before Tony’s life took a strange turn. On one unremarkable afternoon, two men in black suits, black shades, black shoes, black ties, and bad attitudes showed up at his office.

Without so much as flipping a badge, one of them demands to know, “Are you Mr. Stark?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I am Sam Wilson,” the other man said. “This is James Barnes. We work in Research and Development for MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service.”

“You should come with us,” Barnes said, and it sounded less like a suggestion than a demand.

He probably had a point, and they probably had ways of making their request less pleasant, but Tony had never been very good with being told what to do.

“And why would I do that?”

“Professor Nigel Brandon recommended you for a current vacancy in our department,” Sam explained, exercising somewhat more patience than his counterpart. “If only half of what he says is true, the next ten minutes will be very good to you.”


	5. Chapter 5

Tony never told Steve about his run in with the government. At first it was only because the men in black suits had looked so absurdly cliché, but once Tony was shown R&D’s basement offices at the SIS building and invited to poke around their shiny gadgets and fancy cars, then even introduced to Q himself, it felt wrong to openly talk about it. Instead, Tony let Steve believe he was still working at Imperial College. 

That was three months ago. 

“He’s worth it, I promise,” Tony said with a quiet, distracted sigh as Sharon brought him a cup of tea. She sat down with her own cup while Tony comfortably perched on her desk. “He’s considerate. He admits when he’s wrong, he works on improving.”

“Sure he’s not just doing it while he’s using you?” she pointed out. “You don’t even know who this Steve Rogers is. He could secretly be married to some poor woman raising his children in Sussex, or a fugitive—or, or a tax attorney! And then what will you do?”

“He’s humble, he’s generous, and he’s kind,” Tony said after some thought. “He tries. That deserves a second date, doesn’t it?”

Sharon eyed him dubiously. “It’s been three months. I think you’re going to give him a second date no matter what I say.”

“You say that like I’m the only one making poor life choices…” Tony whined mulishly. “Meanwhile, who was shamelessly flirting with 002 in her own office on Monday? Hm?”

“They’re double-oh’s,” Sharon explained with a roll of her eyes. “All they know is flirting, fucking, and murder. Flirting is the cleanest option.”

The intercom on Sharon’s desk buzzed to life. “Carter, in here.”

“Duty calls,” Tony said with a smile, and they both got up to get going. “Come down and help us test out some hoverbikes? Five o’clock.”

Sharon spun on her heels to stare at him with wide-eyed excitement. “We did not requisition hoverbikes, Tony,” she whispered urgently.

“Requisition? Look,” Tony said with the confidence of a man who was definitely guessing but unbothered by it. “If we waited for you to requisition everything the operatives need, we’d be nowhere fast. Most of what they use was created because we’re all still children trying to shock the pants off each other.”

“This conversation never happened!” Sharon hissed through her teeth, and right before opening the door to H’s office she soundlessly mouthed, ‘I’ll be there!’

***

“Hey, Tony,” Sam called across the bench, hurrying around it with gleeful enthusiasm before Tony even had a chance to finish his own thought and look up. From one second to the next, Sam stood right next to him with what looked like a pen and a mechanical wasp in his hands. “Listen. 004 is going to be in here any minute. Bucky made the pen and I made the stinger. Can you make her fly?”

Tony couldn’t resist opening the pen up and peeking in to marvel at the sleek interior. “Is that a fucking laser?”

“We call her the LaWsp,” he said with a smug grin, pronouncing it law-sp to emphasize the wasp. “Laser Weapons System Pen.”

Tony eyed him thoughtfully. He couldn’t decide if he could bear not knowing how many hours Sam and Bucky had spent brainstorming the name, or if he really was that much of a masochist. 

“Can you do it?”

“Yeah—yeah, got it,” he promised, taking the wasp before Sam ran off. “Buy me time!”

“I’ll throw Buck at her,” Sam promised, since Bucky’s attempts to flirt back with 004 always ate up time. “You think you can handle outfitting her solo?”

That, more than the LaWsp, made Tony cringe with discomfort. “Seriously?”

“You can do it, you’ve seen me do it a dozen times,” Sam assured him in a gentling tone. “They flirt with everything, so don’t take anything personally. Especially 008,” he added with a tone of caution, because nobody was ever going to let Tony live that incident down. “I’ve seen 007 flirt with elevators, okay? So long as you never give in and slip them anything under the table, you’re fine. They’re predators: they will exploit any sign of weakness.”

Tony frowned and barely contained his whine. “You’re leaving me to handle a predator?”

“Don’t give me those Bambi eyes, I’m a married man,” Sam smirked wryly, then with a final pat on the shoulder, he said, “her Beretta and her lip gloss are on the block. If she brings the bike back, she gets the Aston Martin with the seat warmers; if she doesn’t, she gets the Jag with the automatic transmission.”

Tony grunted in understanding and quietly turned to his new task. All the machinery was in place, and the broad aspects pre-programmed. Bucky already armed the pen with a sonic taser, a carbon dioxide laser, with a one time use self-destruct explosive package. Sam programmed the stinger with its GPS tracker, wings, and four total doses - two lethal, two tranquilizers. But the stinger needed to sync up with the pen’s targeting system, and it needed to find its way back to the pen fast.

There was a targeting system he’d been working on that would do the trick, and if Bucky could fumble his way through failing to ask 004 out on a date long enough, he’d have the docking added in no time.

“My, my. You must be Mr. Stark,” a sultry woman purred over his shoulder. “You look like the man for me.”

He wouldn’t gasp, he wouldn’t jump. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing she’d scared the living daylights out of him.

“004, welcome back,” he said, attempting to affect a tired sigh despite his racing heart. “What’s the status of your bike?”

She dangled the keys he wanted along with a pretty little pout. “Turned to ash in Brazil. But I have the keys?”

Tony contained his sigh, restricting himself to giving her a tired look. He took the keys from her and threw them into the trash. “Fine. Come with me,” he said with a rueful tone, leading her around to the block in his part of the lab. Each part of the lab had their own block, where the final set of prepared assets for each operative would be laid out before the mission. They took turns equipping the operatives, double-oh’s only the most irritating and destructive among them.

“Beretta, now with digital palm-printing, triggered when anybody but yourself attempts to fire the weapon. Digital prints are uploaded to our server within eighty seconds of the attempted shot, so long as the pistol is not submerged or buried in some way. The lip gloss is a fast-acting poison: a trace amount will hospitalize a man or animal of approximately 100 kilos, while a drop will kill the same body within seconds. It must be ingested to act to full effect; topical contact will only cause disorientation at most. The lipstick you carry may act as a protective layer for a short time, so if you paint your lips with the lipstick and add a minor coat of gloss, you may get away with it for a short while. Wash away with regular antibacterial soap. You already have the pills for poisoning, if you accidentally ingest some yourself. Finally,” he said, laying the pen on the block, “Barnes’ design: it has a sonic taser, a carbon dioxide laser, and an explosive package equivalent to 72 tons of TNT you can only use once. It has a surveillance component that can tail your target up to seven kilometers, after which point it will automatically return to the pen. It can deliver four subdermal doses: two lethal, two tranquilizers. And,” he finished, dangling the keys to the Jag. “Shiny new Jag, complete with pacifier seatbelts.”

“What haven’t you thought of, Tony?” Hope mused to herself in awe. “If anything will bring me home from this mission, it will be your incredible work. And if I don’t come home,” she couldn’t help but add with a tickled smirk, a thought too common to be worrisome. “At least your beautiful brown eyes will be my last memory of England. Thank you.”

She took the keys, and Tony packed up her gear on autopilot. She pressed in close and softly kissed him goodbye on the cheek. She smelled like orange blossoms and juniper.

Tony was in so much trouble.

***

“Steve?” Tony called into the apartment in a quiet voice. “You awake?”

Just hearing his voice brought a smile to Steve’s face. “Tony! You’re home late,” he called back. Slowly, and with more care than any healthy person would need, he shuffled around from the small breakfast nook separating the kitchen from the studio room in time to see Tony hang up his coat.

“Someone in the lab got a new bike,” Tony told him with a big grin, “he let a whole bunch of us test drive it around the building. Steve, it was _amazing_ ,” he thrilled emphatically, beaming in his happiness, and if ever Steve hadn’t wanted to kiss him before, he desperately wanted to do so now. Not that he was in a position to get physical; he hadn’t been for a long time. As Steve’s wounds had healed, they had sometimes tangled in a kiss, or found comfort in each other’s arms.

But Steve had been firmly stuck on second base these past three months. It was enough to drive a man crazy.

“I picked up some curry,” Tony told him, blissfully unaware of Steve’s unhelpful thoughts. “Lamb and eggplant for you, pumpkin and paneer for me.”

“Kiss me, Tony, I beg you,” Steve sighed with palpable affection, “put me out of my misery.”

Tony laughed, a gentle, joyous sound that only ever left Steve feeling gleefully possessive of bringing Tony such happiness. Without waiting for Steve to move, Tony closed the distance between them. As always, he was careful not to physically jolt Steve or hurt him, but still Tony pressed in close and let Steve feel his body against his own. Tony cradled Steve’s face with tender hands, and for all the kisses in his life, Steve could feel himself lost in the intoxicating smell of Tony’s cologne, the loving care in his touch.

“I’ve missed you and your kisses all day,” Steve confessed as they parted for breath, and he could feel Tony smiling happily in return.

Tony laughed quietly and mouthed at Steve’s lips with a playful bite. “Then will you let me take you to bed and tell you about my day?”

“For as long as you will have me.”


	6. Chapter 6

After nearly five months together in Tony’s studio and that hell forsaken wall-bed, Steve could finally walk, stretch, and even shave his face with enough dexterity to go back to his own flat in Chelsea.

His last order of business had been ‘accidentally’ ordering a mattress on Tony’s phone. Steve had been _absolutely mortified_ \- he had such thick fingers after all, and technology wasn’t his strongest suit. He had meant to buy it for himself, but autofill had charged it to Tony’s credit card and arranged it to be delivered to Tony’s address while Steve was entirely helpless to stop the transaction from going through.

Steve felt so terrible about putting Tony in such financial limbo that he insisted on addressing it immediately. Luckily, Tony had already planned to walk Steve back to Chelsea to be sure he wouldn’t hurt himself going home. 

“Please, please have a seat,” Steve asked him as soon as they walked into his flat. He took the small duffle Tony had carried up the stairs for him and gestured at the sitting room. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Tony gave him a strange look, which, all things considered, was valid. Steve could have played it cooler, but with a man like Tony, Steve already knew his best chance for success was to leverage him with guilt and shame.

“Steve, you’re scaring me,” Tony admitted quietly. He took a seat on one of the beautiful velvet wingback chairs in Steve’s sitting room. “I’ll be right here for as long as you need me to be here, okay? Don’t rush. The last thing you need is to hurt—”

“I’m okay, I promise,” Steve assured him, pausing long enough to take Tony’s hand in his and press a soft kiss into his palm. “I’ll be right back.”

After a quick trip to his home office, Steve returned with a small, unassuming John Lewis shopping bag.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am for putting you in such a difficult financial position, Tony,” he said as he sat down in a chair next to Tony.

Tony gave him a long-suffering look that spoke volumes of how little he worried about Steve’s promises. “Steve, we’ve been over this: I know you’re good for it. It’s just money, we’ll figure it out.”

“I practically lived in your bed for the past five months,” Steve continued, and it was enough of a non-sequitur that Tony gave him a curious look. “The more I think about it, the more I want you to have it. The mattress. I’ll order myself another one,” he promised when Tony’s jaw dropped. But Tony didn’t look mollified; he was gearing up for an argument. Steve quickly pushed the John Lewis bag into his hands before he lost ground. “The money for the mattress and for my share of living expenses is there.”

“…Steve, you know I can’t,” Tony whispered when he finally caught up with Steve. “This is too much. I didn’t—I mean, yeah, some money for groceries and bills would be great, but I didn’t do it because I needed rent money—”

“You took me in when I had nowhere else to go, Tony. You didn’t even hesitate. You took care of me when I couldn’t do anything for myself. No amount of money could repay you for what you’ve done for me. Please? Unless there’s something else you’d rather have, let me do this. I want to do this.”

Tony glanced into paper bag long enough that Steve knew he was thinking. Eight stacks of fresh twenties still in their wrapping from the bank. A genius like Tony didn’t need more than a second to realize he had 16,000 pounds in his hands.

“I don’t know what to say,” Tony eventually admitted. “Steve, this is… a lot of money.”

“I did the math,” Steve lied in a last-ditch effort to convince him. “After the mattress, there’s only five thousand left. After my half of your rent, you’re left with 1,750, or 350 a month. That’s less than a hundred quid a week; actually, now that I think about it, I’m sure I owe you more—”

“No!” Tony cried as Steve moved to get up, “Steve, damnit—no, this is plenty. End of discussion. So, uh. I’ll go deposit this?” he stalled briefly, and Steve savored his victory. In his rush to stop Steve from giving him _more_ money, Tony did exactly what Steve wanted him to do: he took the damn money.

“Would you like me to pick up groceries on the way back?”

If Steve had a sentimental heart, it would have melted. “You mean you’re not sick of me?” he half-joked, earning himself a smack on the knee.

“You think I’m leaving you in an empty apartment with no food or help? I’m offended, Steven,” he muttered, though he looked anything but offended. “Come on, give me a grocery list and I’ll—”

“Honestly, I’m ready to get out into the world again,” Steve interrupted with a wry smile. “Want to go together? Bank, lunch, groceries?”

“Bank, groceries, home cooked food?” Tony countered with an impish excitement. Steve watched his excitement curiously; from all that he had seen in Tony’s studio, Steve wouldn’t have guessed Tony was particularly interested in cooking. His excitement could have been about anything from food play and fucking on the dining room table, to enjoying the freedom of cooking in a large, top of the line kitchen instead of his own outdated kitchenette.

Not that the reason mattered. Tony was offering to spend more time with him, and if there was anything Steve needed after months of being seen as a helpless invalid, it was a chance to prove to Tony that he was fighting fit. Or, more to the point, fucking fit.

“I’ve had your cooking,” Steve said in soft, delighted words. “Of course I’ll say yes.”

***

After far too long, Steve took a shower at his own place - in his steam shower, with his products, with his glorious water pressure. He put on clothes with firm seams that button. Months of immobility and recovery meant his tailored clothes fit loosely on him, and demoralizing as that was, it happened too frequently for him to worry. It was only a matter of time and determination before he was himself again, and if there is anything Steve Rogers had in abundance, it was determination.

They went to the bank, but that was as far as they got with their plans. Everything derailed after Steve made a comment about how Tony could easily infer London’s early history and development by studying a map of the city streets.

They took the tube to Blackfriars, and walked to what had once been the heart of the capital. London was once protected by city walls, and Ludgate street survived from a time when it had been the westernmost gate into the city. Food was the center of social life in those days, it was a part of the weekly routine that brought people out of the house to see familiar faces and good friends. 

As they walked by St. Paul’s, Steve pointed out Friday Street, where Londoners once gathered to buy fish on Fridays, and Bread Street that centuries ago was filled with bakers and their delicious treats. There was Milk Street and Honey Lane, and farther from the water they came to Poultry. Steve explained that Poultry, along with the rest of the butchers and cattle merchants were able to be this far from the port because of how they received their goods. Bakeries and fishmongers relied on wheat shipments or fishermen who delivered by the Thames, but cows, sheep, pigs, birds were walked into the city from Smithfield, a meat market that had helped shape London and England since medieval days. It wasn’t by accident that highways like the A1, A40, and 201 all touched Smithfield. Today they were highways that led into the city center, but centuries ago, the two broad streets where designed to allow cattle to reach Cheapside, which ironically was an old word for ‘marketplace’ and had nothing to do with low prices.

By the time they made it to the Tower of London, saw the remains of London’s original city wall, and took the tube back to Steve’s place, Steve was at the end of his rope. He tried to keep it together, but either he was losing his touch, or Tony simply knew him too well. They went back and left the groceries for another day.

Steve barely had any pride left between his gritted teeth by the time they climbed the four flights to his flat.

“How hungry are you? I’m too tired to sit,” he announced when Tony naturally made for the dining room. “Bedroom?”

Tony didn’t look surprised or confused; he laughed instead, taking Steve’s take-away from him to go put it in the kitchen. “Of all the ways I thought you’d get me into your bed…”

Steve laughed and whined on the same breath. “I’m still recovering, where’s your compassion?” he moaned, and he got no farther than the living room. He rolled into his big, blue velvet sofa like a well-dressed rag doll and waited for Tony to find him.

It didn’t take long.

With an off-hand comment about Steve’s greedy ass taking up all the space, Tony kicked his shoes off and climbed onboard. After all, if there was no space for him to nap on the couch because of Steve, Steve only had himself to blame.

It was so clearly playful and Steve had no doubt Tony would find a way to give Steve his space to rest any second, but rest was the last thing he wanted. Before Tony had a chance to move away, Steve wrapped his arms around Tony in a loose embrace. He cupped Tony’s neck at first, giving him a gentle squeeze, then slowly started carding his fingers through Tony’s hair. With time, Tony relaxed into a happy human blanket keeping Steve’s body warm.

“You’re not wrong, you know,” Steve murmured after a long silence. “I’ve wanted you in my bed since you spent five minutes solving a problem that would have stumped my IT department for days. I’ve wanted to devote hours to kissing you since you chose a farmer’s market over designer pastries. But… since you took me in, I don’t know what I want anymore.”

Tony picked his head up and gave Steve an uncomfortable, questioning look. “You know that’s… backwards, right?”

“Not for me,” Steve said with a shrug, but Tony didn’t quite buy it. He narrowed his eyes at Steve and let Steve stew in the silence.

“You said you liked honesty,” Steve reminded him, a touch bashful. He knew it was unusual, but Tony wanted honesty, and wasn’t that the whole point he was trying to make? “Sex is kind of easy, one-night stands, whatever. Spending time with someone, listening to them, remembering what they say… that takes effort. And for someone like me? My life is my job, I’m away for business a lot. The effort feels pointless. I can’t plan a future, I can’t make any promises, and that’s never been a problem. Until you. The more I learn about you, Tony - how clever you are, how you treat people in need who have no business asking you for help - the more I want to know.”

Careful of Steve’s recently recovered injuries, Tony sat up and straddled Steve’s midsection. “Let me get this straight,” he asked in a playful parody of an interrogating officer. “You wanted sex, but you invited me out at _lunch time_ for _pastries_ instead of a night-time date at a bar? Are you familiar with the concept of ‘mixed signals,’ Steven?”

“It was a _Saturday_ ,” Steve tried to explain in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice, but when Tony gave him a sly look and rocked his hips, Steve found himself breathless for more than one reason. “Why, is sex only a nighttime activity in your life? I wanted to take my time with you, undress you in daylight. Look at you, Tony,” he whispered, skimming his palms over Tony’s thighs to frame his hips. “Can you blame me?”

For a long time, Tony only studied Steve in silence. He brushed some of Steve’s hair away from his face, then swept the coarse pad of his thumb over Steve’s full, pink bottom lip. Obliging as he was, Steve parted his lips for Tony’s exploratory touch.

“We’ve still got a few hours of daylight,” Tony told him in a impish whisper. “Unless… you’re still recovering?”

Despite Tony’s weight settled comfortably on his torso, Steve sat up in one smooth, effortless lift and caught Tony in his arms. He would likely live to regret it, but the risk of aggravating his injuries was worth the sudden shiver that ran through Tony’s body and the wanton glint in his eyes when Steve laid his hands on Tony’s hip and lower back, braced his weight, and stood.

It could be his first night with Tony, it could be his last. It didn’t matter what it was, but Steve wanted it more than anything. “You’ve worried about me enough, Tony,” he said on their unhurried walk to his bedroom. “Let me show you how grateful a man like me can be.”

***

“Damn, Stark,” Bucky murmured in praise. “Good work, you outdid yourself.”

Tony was still wiping down the hood after making his final adjustments. She was too beautiful for even one oily little fingerprint. His first carte blanche project, a custom built Aston Martin with one of a kind stealth technology, scrambler, and entirely water-proof. Manual transmission, all the bells and whistles. He called her Lucy, because who could resist falling in love with her?

“She’s ready to help save the free world,” Tony said proudly. “I’m taking her for a spin around the course when Penny finishes with her new inflatable scooters. Want in?”

“Fuck yeah, I’m in,” Bucky said with a grin. But his expression sobered a little as he remembered why he was there. He had carried a tray of gutted tech down with him, and he delivered it to Tony by carefully setting it down on his workstation.

“007 is being cleared for active duty as we speak. He’ll want leads on Scorpius. Explosives haven’t gotten anything out of it, but, since this was what got you hired in the first place,” Bucky reasoned, “I thought you might have more luck.”

Tony eyed the detonators and random bits of recovered tech. The lunatic behind the bombings was responsible for nearly turning his Steve into a statistic. They should have brought it all to Tony from the start, nothing would satisfy him more than personally nailing the bastard.

“Leave it with me,” he told Bucky coolly. “I’ll find him for you.”

Bucky nodded in understanding, then with a sly grin he much too casually asked, “Hey, how’s Steve doing? Up and walking again?”

“He’s getting there,” Tony said with a smile. The memory of Steve getting there earlier that morning, and in the hours before dawn, and twice before midnight was enough to send shivers down Tony’s spine. Quickly, he cleared his throat before Bucky might notice and resumed wiping down his pristine car as a distraction. “Not back to work yet, but maybe next week. Desk duty for a while, he said.”

The problem was that Tony wasn’t some spy, and he wasn’t a masterful liar. Bucky saw right through him, and clearly felt no compunction about laughing at Tony from across the workbench.

“He’s only ‘better’? You’re practically glowing, pal. What kind of magic dick does this Steve have?”

Without thinking, Tony snatched up a wrench and threw it after his retreating friend, who had enough sense to duck even when giggling like a wayward child.

“It’s not his dick that’s magic, Barnes!” Tony shouted after him, turning heads all around the garage. “It’s the whole package!”


	7. Chapter 7

It had already been a tough morning at Q-branch. Four-thirty marked sixty hours since 006’s last check-in. Only Q had been there for every gruelling hour, turning the world over to find a trace of her. A double-oh’s life expectancy was a known hazard of the job, but it had been a minute since an agent was lost without a trace.

Four years, to be exact.

Q’s faithful minions took turns providing support and cover in that three-day period, and Tony was no different. He, Sam, and Bucky made sure to be there for the same shifts - they knew and trusted each other well enough that even Q recognized that they worked more effectively together than apart. As a team, they put out the fires Q didn’t have time for until 006 was found, dead or alive.

By dawn, Tony had strong-armed CCTV in a South African den of iniquity so 008 could move unseen into the AWB’s unsavory annual auction. He was waiting on the results of the facial recognition software to bounce through the CIA and Chinese intelligence when he Sam called his name.

“Tony! Where’s Lucy’s tracker?”

He stared at his screen with unseeing eyes as Sam’s words sunk in. He spun on his heels to glare back, livid. “Did Bond lose my fucking car?”

“Not exactly,” Sam said with a wry look. It wasn’t like any of them ever believed their gadgets would live forever, but there was a particular rage that set in when their gadgets were lost _on the first mission_.

“Trade?”

“Sheep dipping in AWB global neo-Nazi ass kissing contest,” Tony summed up while they exchanged headsets. “Facial recognition is running, soft search for Lindhaus is a dud, but we’ve got two viable connections.”

“Human trafficking, Houston,” Sam said in return as they took over each other’s stations. “Bond lost Lucy to Vargas in a card game.”

Tony had half a mind to throw the headset away and leave Bond to fend for himself. “I’m gonna kill him. I’m going to fucking kill—”

He gritted his teeth and reminded himself that there was so much more at stake. Human traffickers were the scum of the earth, and Tony had to believe Bond took a carefully calculated risk.

Tony shoved the headset on and tried not to let his pride taint his first interaction with the one and only 007.

“Motherfucker, you lost my car in a fucking card game?” he hissed through gritted teeth. To hell with first impressions. “The fob is the tracker, Bond!”

“Oh, dear,” Bond snickered in undertone, clearly making an effort to communicate without being overheard. “I like you, is your mouth this filthy in person?”

Tony growled at Bond’s easy flirting. Engaging with him wasn’t worth the headache. “I’m running the remote tracker now,” Tony told him in a tired voice. “Stand by. Confirm current location.”

“Outside Porto Seguro, Brazil,” Bond replied. “Mansion, new money. No class; Persian rugs in the bathroom aren’t even hand-woven.”

“Wow, look at you,” Tony drawled in sarcastic praise. “James Bond, interior designer.”

“I confess, I dabble,” Bond murmured in a deep, sinful voice. He could have said anything in that voice and still sent shivers tickling down Tony’s spine.

It took a moment for Tony to catch his breath and clear his head. Bond knew what he was doing, Tony could practically feel the cocky smirk in Bond’s voice. That smug bastard.

Thankfully, the tracker signals from Lucy and from Bond’s watch popped up on top of each other.

“You are on site: the car is within a hundred yards of where you’re standing,” Tony informed him. “If you can’t get it out of there, radio back and I’ll blast it remotely. They cannot get their hands on that tech, do you copy?”

Bond was quiet for a short period, probably moving through unsafe space. After a minute or two of radio silence, Tony heard the agent gleefully whisper, “Why, what’d you put in it?”

He might as well have been a little boy on Christmas morning.

“Lucy’s stealth technology is the first of its kind. If we lose her, she’s lost forever, do you understand? She’s our only working prototype. I can’t even track it; that technology gets into the wrong hands, we’re screwed. Is that clear?”

“Whoa, buddy,” he snickered, more tickled than bothered by Tony’s minor meltdown, “did you give your car to the wrong agent or what?”

“Why don’t you put rocks in your pockets and jump in a river?” Tony snapped, then he raised his voice to be heard over Bond’s laughing. “Command on standby. Good luck, 007.”

Punching the mute button wasn’t as satisfying as slamming down a receiver, but it was damn close. Bucky stared at him from two feet away, where he waited to reconnect with 002 on a long-range tagging op.

“First time with 007?” he asked with a knowing grin. “He’ll get under your skin.”

“I hope Vargas gets a shot in before Bond kills him,” Tony grumbled with feeling. Not that anyone believed it; all Q-branch analysts remembered their first dance with an operative they’d like to smack around, and for many of them, that dance had been with Bond himself.

“It’s only six o’clock,” Bucky pointed out, when across from them Sam covered his mic long enough to innocently wonder, “Let me guess, Steve and his magic dick still away for business?”

Bucky laughed so hard he honked, while Tony glared daggers at his friends.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I need a break,” Tony grumbled mostly to himself, then with a quick check-in with Bucky he threw down his headset and walked away. If he was going to deal with 007 again, he needed something a hell of a lot stronger than coffee.

***

A week passed in silence, and 006 was officially declared MIA, presumed dead. In the same time, Tony, Sam, and Bucky helped 008 safely extract an NSA agent and install himself with the AWB for a long-op.

007 was less of a success. He managed to get Lucy away from Vargas long enough to drive her off a cliff in a high-speed car chase. Tony couldn’t even be mad. Clearly, Bond had made an effort to get his car back, and Lucy’s waterproof engine made it possible for him to escape uninjured from the depths of Rio Buranhém.

As requested, Bond made the call to Q-branch once the car was lost to him. Tony couldn’t tell if it hurt more or less, but he put her down himself.

It was eight o’clock on a Thursday night when Q sent the daytime crew home.

“You think Steve still remembers your face?” Sam teased while Q had a final check in with Bucky on 002’s mission. “Is he even home yet?”

“He’s back on Sunday,” Tony told him, deliberately ignoring the first question. “How about you? Miss your empty flat? Does it miss you, too?”

“That’s cold, man,” Sam drawled. “And I was gonna invite you to watch Blade with me and Buck.”

“No can do, I’m on call until 007 is de-briefed by H tonight,” Tony said with a helpless little shrug. “Just in case shit hits the fan.”

Bucky joined them just in time to misunderstand the conversation. “What happened?”

“We’re watching Blade at Tony’s tonight,” Sam explained, and Tony perked up with a grin. “BYOPNB: bring your own pizza ‘n booze.”

“I’m going to regret this,” Tony could already guess, but he couldn’t have been happier.

***

They dragged Tony’s fancy new mattress out into the middle of the room, piled on the couch cushions and blankets, and watched Blade on Tony’s 23 inch hand-me-down. To make it even better, Sharon called him ten minutes into the movie to report that 007 had completed his meeting with H. After a seventeen hour shift, Tony was officially off the clock.

He made up for the bloodbath, the daywalker, and all the vampires turned to ash with two beers and three shots. Turning a movie into a drinking game wasn’t the smartest plan he’d made since college, but it had been a long week, and none of them felt much like being smart.

Halfway through the movie, none of them were good for anything besides laughing, drinking, and snoring. All of Steve’s calls went unnoticed and unanswered.

***

Friday didn’t pull any punches. Tony woke up to two voice mails from Steve: one that said he’d been delayed and would not be back until the following Saturday, and another to apologize for not wishing Tony a good weekend. Steve wouldn’t pick up when Tony called him back before work, but it was all for the better, probably, since Tony could barely find his own feet.

He shuffled into work late, where he received Friday’s third gift between his last bacon roll and second dose of paracetamol. As if the hangover and missed calls from Steve weren’t enough, his next gift was none other than Bond, James Bond.

Bond was due at Q-branch first thing in the morning, and Tony was tasked with taking everything from him except his gun and his watch. After quickly skimming through Sharon’s report of Bond’s meeting with H, he learned that while Vargas was a trafficking shit-head, he did not deal in explosives. Another lead brought him to London, which at least explained why Tony wasn’t to collect his gun. The rest of the meeting had been redacted and marked classified, even to Q-branch.

If Tony hadn’t still been recovering from the night before, that alone would have worried him.

“Shouldn’t Q be doing this?” Tony finally asked Bucky. “Half this shit is classified, it’s clearly above my paygrade. What bullshit did Bond do that Q won’t work with him?”

“It’s not like that,” Bucky said quietly, and hangover or not, he looked wistful. “Q… had a relationship with the former Bond. His Bond died four years ago. I think it was the real deal. I don’t know what happened to him, nobody does,” he admitted in a quieter voice, “he disappeared, and his body was found later, desacraged. I think only H and Q know what was done to him, but I heard it wasn’t pretty.”

Tony didn’t know what to say. He had lost an operative, once. It wasn’t a double-oh, though somehow, he imagined that didn’t mean a damn. Watching it happen from a distance without any power to help, living in someone’s ear while they were hunted and killed - it was an experience he didn’t wish on anyone. The horror had nothing to do with titles or designations.

A direct call came in for Tony from Q, but when Tony connected the call, it was Bond on the other line.

“—is a goddamn name trace on Yelena Belova,” Bond was impatiently whispering into the phone. Q’s silent treatment didn’t bring out the best in 007, but as nasty as the agent could be, Tony felt real urgency in his tone.

“Yelena Belova,” Tony confirmed, running the trace with both English and Russian spelling to be safe.

“Oh, _James_ ,” a woman purred directly into the microphone, or directly into Bond’s ear. “What magic can your hands perform for me now that we are alone?”

Tony muted his mic and shuddered. As if his morning hadn’t been bad enough.

Bucky took one look at him and sighed. “Don’t tell me it got worse.”

Instead of answering, Tony switched his audio from headset to speaker to treat Bucky - and a handful of nearby analysts - to the most trusted weapon in 007’s arsenal. Ironically, it was the only one he never seemed to damage.

“Aw, come on,” Bucky openly complained, “I’m only on my first coffee!”

“And that woman is doomed for a second orgasm,” Tony said with a defeated sigh. “Why are we good guys again?”

“Tell me about it,” Bucky muttered into his coffee.

As expected, Belova’s loud moans attracted a small audience of analysts who surreptitiously found reasons to gather near Tony’s station. Once the wet sound of kissing and the hitching cries of pleasure came over the speakers, having others there holding their breath in audience of Bond’s performance made it easier for Tony to remember that this was for work.

There was something about Bond’s soft, rumbling growls and gentle grunts that left Tony’s body trembling like some misaligned Pavlovian party trick. Bond was quieter than he had expected; no _‘take it, take it all’_ nonsense, or other classic alpha male lines to objectify the woman of the hour.

From wet, borderline slurping sounds in the foreground, Bond’s silence, and Belova’s crooning cries of pleasure, it was easy to guess what act Bond and Belova were enjoying. But Tony’s reaction to it was unlike his experience with 008 and 004. With them, he could focus on surrounding sounds, details that the agent might miss while on the job. For 008, he maneuvered the harem’s security cameras to keep his in-depth interrogation secret from overzealous guards.

But something about Bond’s unexpectedly gentle approach, the soft, loving words he kissed into his lover’s body, and his deep, husky groans made it so easy - so _tempting_ \- for Tony to simply close his eyes and imagine his Steve. His Steve’s hand skimming over Tony’s inner thigh, his Steve’s strong, dexterous fingers opening Tony up with tender, attentive care of a most devoted lover until Tony was nothing but a sobbing feast to plunder.

Bond took his time, alternating between eating out Belova until she was spewing curses in her native Georgian, and fucking her with slow, powerful rolls of his hips. The pattern intentionally kept Belova on the verge of orgasm for many minutes longer, and provided Bond precious time to calm himself each time.

Tony couldn’t help but feel sorry for the woman who would so easily be discarded once Bond had no other use for her. His whole face warmed at the memory of his first night with Steve, his Steve who had devoted an hour to an extensive exploration of Tony’s most intimate secrets. He mapped out Tony’s body like a master at his craft, until he had memorized even the smallest details, like how the warm, wet touch of his lips behind Tony’s knee would leave him shivering in anticipation, but a firm massage of his fingers in the same, soft skin inspired no such pleasure. When Steve had finally lowered himself on top of Tony, face to face and sharing the same breath, Steve was reduced to a worshipper held captive between Tony’s thighs. Tony had watched Steve’s eyes roll back in his pleasure when the first thrust breached Tony’s body. Tony willed himself to watch as Steve bit his lip and set his jaw against whatever he instinctively desired, but for all his skill and confidence, he visibly struggled to contain himself. To reduce a man as strong and determined as Steve to the point of delirium had left Tony drunk with power. He locked his legs around Steve’s narrow waist, and with firm, eager rolls of his hips, Tony begged Steve to fuck him, to give him everything Tony had desired in their five months of platonic intimacy.

But 007 was a professional, and unlike his Steve, who had barely lasted a few minutes their first time together, Bond was still actively unraveling Belova. If she was on her second orgasm at the start of the performance, Bond had yet to even the score in the twenty minutes Tony and all around him had been listening. The realization left Tony huffing a laugh of relief and rolling his eyes at his damn lizard brain. Bond was a professional, an accomplished assassin and a willing whore for the crown. There was no question which man was better, not for Tony: he would choose his Steve any day. The way Steve treated Tony made him feel special and adored, a desirable, intoxicating lover unlike anyone Steve had met. And he did it without the lies and tricks that Bond used to attract the men and women he bedded.

Happy in his sudden clarity, Tony finally noticed the name trace had turned up one e known KGB alias. Yelena Belova was a Black Widow.

“Belova confirmed hostile operative,” Tony whispered into the mic, doing his best not to distract Bond from the work at hand. “KGB, Black Widow. No surviving associates. Proceed with caution. And use your mouth, she likes it better. Spare a finger for her ass and finish her off, I have other work to do.”

Obliging as always, Bond made no attempt to quickly finish her off. He knew Tony could not mute the sound, so he retaliated, with interest. The euphoric cries and animal-like groans filled Q-branch, and Tony had every intention of leaving the rest of the office to suffer with him until Q threw a new headset at him from across the room.

He was forced to endure ten more minutes of Bond’s latest magnum opus before finally only Bond’s panting breath came across Tony’s headset.

“Finger her ass and finish her off,” Bond rasped, smirking to himself. “You made that car, Lucy, didn’t you?”

“The car that you ruined, yes,” Tony said with a sigh. “And no, I’m not making you another one.”

Bond laughed shamelessly. Water ran in the background, and Tony could picture the agent preparing a shower. “I like you,” he said, “what’s your name?”

“Tony. Tony Stark,” Tony told him, even though he knew he’d never hear the end of it from Bond now. Being requested by 007 was the last thing he needed, but it wasn’t like he could refuse. This was his job.

There was a long, pregnant silence on the other end of the line.

“Of course it is,” Bond eventually said, his voice colder and more distant than Tony had ever heard. The line died, with no other words or explanation.

Sam smacked him on the shoulder until Tony took the headset off and looked at him. “You okay, man? You look pale.”

“Pretty sure I just pissed off Bond,” Tony said quietly. “I just… I don’t know how.”

“You’re fine, double-oh’s are temperamental. They’ve never killed an analyst before.”

Kill, sure, but what about maim? Tony really didn’t want to be the first.

***

The rest of Tony’s Friday passed without incident. That night he picked up two kebabs on his way home, heavy on the garlic sauce. Tony was not moving from his damn bed until Saturday - he was going to eat both his kebabs, finish the last of the whiskey from the BYOPNB, and watch classic episodes of Columbo until his eyes closed.

He pushed his door open, hung his coat and his keys up on a hook by the door, then threw on the lights.

Silent as the dead, 006 was standing in his studio. Tony gave a shout and nearly dropped his take-away. It took him a second to start shouting.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” Tony demanded to know. “Where have you been? You’ll give people heart attacks—”

Romanov turned her hand over to reveal the shine of a knife. Her specialty.

The kebabs slipped from Tony’s slackened grip and fell to the floor. “What… what are—”

“You’re a smart boy. You already know what’s about to happen, don’t you?” she said with a smile that was all teeth. “Close the door, Stark.”

She tied him to a chair. She asked him where Bond hid the ledger on Scorpius. She asked him what Bond knew, what he knew about Singapore.

Tony knew nothing about Bond or where he kept his ledgers. It didn’t matter how many slow, shallow lines and figures she carved into his chest, Tony didn’t know. He’d never even seen Bond, he’d only spoken to him over the phone.

But Tony had traced those detonators back to a warehouse in Singapore. Her uncharacteristically desperate and rather clumsy attempt to get that piece of information out of him only corroborated his find and made him less willing to give it up. Every sliver of intelligence Tony had found was already in Bond’s hands courtesy of Lucy’s secure connection. Tony could only hope it was enough to bring Scorpius down. Steve deserved justice for all the pain he suffered, as did the families of the hundreds lost or injured on that day. Given the choice, Tony would rather die knowing his work afforded Bond a meaningful head start.

Romanov’s watch beeped in a muted alarm. Tony recognized the sound, it was the signal of a breached perimeter.

Someone was coming.

“Once this is over, I will come for your life,” she whispered to him in a promise. Icy chills ran through Tony’s veins; it was the happiest he’d ever heard 006 sound. “Not you, you understand, but everything that gives your life meaning. Your family, your friends. Your lover will watch you burn.”

His front door blew inward in a shattered chunks of wood. 006 didn’t even flinch as Steve barrelled into Tony’s flat, unloading one full mag after another after her graceful, controlled vault out through Tony’s window.

“Steve! What—she’s dangerous, get ba—” he cut himself off with a sudden wince.

Steve had looked ready to jump out of the third storey window after her, but Tony’s wince made him turn around. With one last glance after Romanov, Steve doubled back for Tony. He pulled a knife of the sole of his shoe to free Tony’s hands and feet. It was a standard MI6 issue and Tony couldn’t stop staring.

“Tony, I’m so sorry—I came as fast as I could,” Steve was telling him, not that his words made any sense.

“Steve, what are you talking about? And an ambulance, maybe? I don’t want to see it, just—keep it covered or, or whatever, _fuck!_ It hurts like hell.”

Steve blinked up at him, then without saying anything he pulled the wet folds of Tony’s open shirt apart to see what had happened.

“Steve?” Tony asked when Steve hadn’t moved or looked away from his wound for some time. “Baby, hey, I’m alive it’s ok, just bleeding like an uncooked ham so if you could call an ambulance instead of throwing up or something, that’d be nice. Great, actually. Steve? Hey, Steve?”

Steeling himself, Tony dared to glance down at his chest. The angry, bleeding lines, the jagged edges of his skin curling back from the wound, it was all enough to make Tony sick.

It took him a minute to realize the lines formed a word.

**_Steve_ **

“Steve!” Tony breathed in his sudden shock of alarm. “Oh, god—forget the cops, she knows about you! We have to get you somewhere safe, right now. Get my phone! Steve?”

Obliging as always, Steve closed Tony’s shirt over his wounds, then grabbed Tony’s phone. Like all standard MI6 phones, holding down the 0 signaled an alarm and request for safe extraction. Tony just didn’t understand how Steve knew.

Adrenaline was quickly fading from his system, and Tony could feel his head swimming. He must have lost more blood than he thought, because he was clearly hallucinating. Steve was barking orders at MI6 extraction units. Had Steve broken into his flat firing _guns?_

“How did she find you,” he heard Steve muttering to himself after he threw the phone aside. Gently he lifted Tony out of the chair to take him to the bathroom. God, it was so funny—six months ago it was Tony who would haul Steve in there to wash him, and now it was Tony’s turn. He was going to die in that stupid bathroom. This shithole didn’t even have a damn _tub_.

Steve took a towel and pressed it over Tony’s wound to stall the bleeding. Somewhere between wondering how Steve was so calm and why dying wasn’t scarier, Tony came to a haunting realization.

“Steve, I think it was her,” he whispered urgently. Distantly he knew it could be the bloodloss talking, but in that moment this delirious epiphany felt more real than his own bones. He needed someone to tell Q or Bond; he needed someone to _know_. “There’s a man I work with, Bond. Tell him, he’ll stop her, he has to, for you he has to—”

“Tony, stop! Tony, I _am_ Bond,” Steve interrupted him loudly. “I should never have tried to, to… I don’t even know.”

Tony’s mouth clicked shut and he stared at Steve. “This isn’t funny,” he rasped. It hurt too much to breathe.

“It’s not a joke. I am 007,” Steve said in a gentler voice. Without taking pressure off the towel over Tony’s chest, he pulled out his Walther PPK, his signature piece. Tony took it from him, turning it in his hand. It was the same weapon he had help modify; that was his palm print reader, his enhanced optics.

The sound of boots filled the hallway through the open door. Medical evac was there. Did it matter anymore? Steve was Bond. Tony’s Steve was James Bond.

“Four years ago, I got promoted. I didn’t think I’d need to be Steve anymore, I didn’t think I’d need that life. A life of my own. I was selfish—”

Tony turned the weapon in the palm of his hand, and with a powerful swing, he cracked it over Steve’s face. The force of his blow turned Steve in the other direction, but he stubbornly kept his hand over the towel, putting pressure on Tony’s wounds.

Pistol whipping an operative with the license to kill was about the dumbest thing Tony had ever done, but Tony had never felt so angry in his life. He was bleeding, and he was so fucking tired of the lies. The world was already greying at the edges, what did he have to lose?

“That’s for Belova,” he whispered with a quiet sniff. He couldn’t catch his breath, his whole chest burned, and now his eyes were burning, but he’d be damned if he’d cry over this lying bastard. “Can’t—can’t believe you were dicking someone else—and I gave you pointers, _Jesus Christ_ —”

“Bond, perimeter secure. We’ll take it from here,” a gruff voice reported while Tony’s world spun out of control, and Steve was quickly hustled away so paramedics could attend to Tony.

“I’m going after her,” Steve told him while paramedics rushed to stabilize Tony. “I’ll be back; you can be angry then.”

Tony’s heart skipped a beat and nearly stopped. Steve was walking away, Steve was leaving him.

“Steve!” he shouted, his voice wheezy and frail. “Comms on!”

Steve couldn’t go rogue, he just couldn’t. Pissed as he was, the thought of one double-oh pitted against another made Tony want to tie Steve down and never let him leave. He wasn’t ready to give up the privilege of shouting at Steve for being an asshole yet.

Steve’s flinty expression warmed with a small smile. “Then, I’ll be listening for your voice, Tony,” he promised.

There were too many bodies crowding around him, helping him and moving him. He wanted to reach for Steve, to hold his hand and to know he was safe, but the next time Tony opened his eyes, Steve was gone.

Between the pain, his difficulty breathing, the chaos milling around him, and the crippling fear of what 006 could do to Steve, Tony spiraled. Had Steve been real? After four years, was Bond the man or the persona? One lived to serve, to kill, while the other craved love and connection. If he dared be selfish, too, Tony knew whom he would choose, and he’d be damned before he let Steve Rogers fade away without a fight.

**Author's Note:**

> To explain why I'm not tagging it as infidelity, it's a personal choice. I don't believe sex has anything to do with infidelity, full stop. Infidelity is about being unfaithful, which for me more broadly means breaking your partner(s)'s trust, being dishonest, and - worst of all - trusting someone else in their place. 
> 
> It relates to this story in that I don't believe Bond would be unfaithful, given the chance. On one hand, I would never tag a story where someone has sex with others for work as unfaithful, because it's a _job_ , and as someone who has never had to survive that way, I can't imagine what difficult and taxing work that is. Then, Bond specifically has never been unfaithful, because he's faithful to England and his job, he will do anything to do what England needs. But Bond's whole story is marked by foiled attempts to find personal affection and love: famously, Vesper; then his new bride who was killed just as they were leaving their wedding in In Her Majesty's Secret Service. I personally find that really interesting for a character, someone who has really tried to get away from the horror of his life and find love and peace with someone, but never succeeds. All he has is the next case until he's finished. 
> 
> Tony hearing him having sex with someone else was more about Tony's subconscious recognizing Steve than Tony's conscious self, who has been talking to Steve this whole time without realizing. I wrote it because (1) Steve is a different man with Tony than with the people he beds as Bond, and (2) Bond isn't who he is, and just like most - including Tony! - can't see past the facade, Tony felt the difference in a way that isn't rational or objective. He recognized his Steve in the mess that is Bond, not by being our smart Tony, but by being our Tony who really feels something for Steve. 
> 
> Also, as a final note: We can definitely disagree on this point, but in my world and in my opinion, Tony hearing Steve having sex with someone for work is not a fraction of a problem compared to other things he has to hear Steve do, including torture, murder, fail at saving a life, _be_ tortured, and fight to survive.


End file.
